This shift is another on a long line of moves Apple has made towards getting rid of physical media.

First it was killing floppy disks, then it was removing a disc drive from MacBook Airs, and now it's taking the disc out of operating system installations.

Considering how massive operating system updates and files can be, we are not looking forward to waiting hours to install Lion when it comes out. Our internet speeds aren't that great at the office.

We assume they'll have hard copies to purchase for users without broadband, or for users that have not upgraded to Snow Leopard (10.6 being the first version of OS X that includes the Mac App Store). Maybe we'll just pretend we don't have broadband for a while.

Apple Insider also speculates that hard copies of the software may even come on thumb drives, like the kind you receive when you purchase a MacBook Air.

Another question we have is whether this move indicates that Software Update will no longer handle updates to the operating system. We assume it will, but this would be strange considering all other apps you buy from the Mac App Store get updated from within the App Store itself.